Surnames: McGrath, Spaulding, Luchterhand

----Source: Marathon County Register (Unity, Clark County, Wis.) 05/06/1955

$100 Bequest

The officers of the Unity Cemetery Association have been notified that $100 had been left to the association in the will of the deceased Mary McGrath, who died in Los Angeles, California recently. The McGrath family were former residents of this community, having come here in 1868 and purchased a farm from a Mr. Spaulding who owned a saw mill and several tracts of timber land.

The farm is now owned by Mr. Emil Luchterhand, whose father purchased it from the McGrath’s in 1900.

Some of the family settled at Prentice and some went to California where for years they owned and operated a large apartment house.

Some of the McGrath family are buried in the Unity cemetery and it is a descendant of this family who willed the $100 to the association.

*** Note: According to the California Death Index, 1940-1997, Mary Parthina McGrath was born 19 Dec. 1869 in Missouri and died 17 Apr. 1955.

Response

This bequest was actually made by my great grand aunt Margaret McGrath.  Her mother Mary McGrath and sister Mary A. McGrath are buried in the Brighton Cemetery along with a nephew, Miles Spring.

Margaret (Maggie) was born August 5, 1869 in Otonabee, Ontario to Irish parents.  She died December 21, 1952 in Los Angeles, California.  In 1873 the family came to Clark County and settled in Colby Township.  Maggie would have been 3 or 4 years old.  She taught school in the Colby/Unity area.  She later joined her sister Anna and brother-in-law Miles Spring in Madison, Minnesota where she was also a school teacher.  She was hired as a school principal in Washington State and eventually moved to Los Angeles where she was also a principal.  Her widowed sister, Anna Spring, died in LA and the two of them lived together for some time.  Linda Ewen